Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely
Click to viewSam(antha) aka Malista is dying. This news doesn't surprise me- more then all of us are perpetually doing so, Sam has been actively travelling down that definitive road for months now in her struggle with leukemia. Failed bone marrow transplants, chemo complications and the like are all obvious warning signs & I've been describing Sam-my-dying-friend for weeks now. So what shocks me is my shock.
I've had months of warning, but after years of absence and that is the heart of these feelings. Sam may have been frequently on my mind but her words were not commonly before my eye, and that absence was mine. I know and have lamented that I too easily allow people to drift out of touch as I flit amongst the friendly people who surround me; this time the obstacle (brain hemorrhaging) is not one I can charm my way around or through. Linear time has struck with a vengeance & all I can do is best deal with the Now now before me.
Solemn Hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
I have been thinking much of Roger Zelazny's short story "Comes Now the Power" these last few weeks, and how perfectly Zelazny captured this manifestation of the drive to bridge the gap between I & Thou. I am no telepath to give Sam the gift of my lifetime in sympathy with the passing of hers, but I can give her what words I've written & held on to in this octade of space between us...symbolically if her time with home hospice proves insufficient for my itinerary. I do hope, selfishly (the feeling also at bottom here- my loss of Sam is her release) that she will be well enough to appreciate my collection of potshards and diaries.
A formula, a phrase remains- but the rest is lost.